Why I Treasure Jonathan Edwards

Having already written the most pathetic bio of Jonathan Edwards ever, I needed a good (okay, just any) excuse to talk a bit more about his life. So though there are more biographical details to come in the final message of this series, for now I’ll mention just a few of the reasons why I treasure Mr. Edwards.

I treasure JE because he was a preacher. Something about that resonates with me.

I treasure JE because he was a writer. As soon as he was old enough his dad had him reading and studying with a pen in his hand. He was always writing, not just to copy down the ideas of others but to express his own thoughts. In fact, in the basement of one of the Libraries at Yale there are over 60,000 handwritten pages by Edwards. Even when writing was inconvenient he developed a system to record his thoughts. For example, it was almost impossible to write well on horseback, especially in the cold winter months. He had a practice of pinning small pieces of cloth to his coat and charging his mind to remember what sequence of thoughts went with each piece of cloth. When he got home he would go into his study and take the pinned pieces off one at a time, writing down everything he could remember.

I treasure JE because he loved solitude and study. He loved his alone-time with God. There were days when he spent 13 hours in reading, meditation, writing, and prayer. Some evenings he would even skip dinner if he was in a study “zone.” He considered this solitude necessary not just for a pastor, but for a Christian:

Some are greatly affected when in company but have nothing that bears any manner of proportion to it in secret, in close meditation, secret prayer, and conversing with God, when alone and separated from all the world. A true Christian doubtless delights in religious fellowship and Christian conversation, and finds much to affect his heart in it, but he also delights at times to retire from all mankind to converse with God…. True religion disposes persons to be much alone in solitary places for holy meditation and prayer…. The most eminent divine favors that the saints obtained, that we read of in Scripture, were in their retirement.

I treasure Edwards because he was an outliner; he was serious; he was a Calvinist.

I treasure Edwards because he loved his wife and kids. This is so obvious, especially in some of his letters to them. He faithfully shepherded and lead his family in spiritual matters.

I treasure Edwards because he loved the church; he was a church-man. Even when he accepted the call to Princeton it was only because he received counsel to do so. This man, with his intellectual abilities and writing arsenal, chose to spend himself for the sake of the church.

I treasure Edwards because he was willing to sacrifice and give up his own comforts for what he believed in. He did not compromise the truth. More on that in a later post.

Lastly, and perhaps significant to no one but myself, he loved storms.

Scarcely anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightening….(I) used to take the opportunity at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God’s thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God.

Edwards had intelligence, insight, and imagination like few other Americans. He was analytical like nobody’s business and disciplined to see every study through to its end. He was voracious in his learning and relentless in the work of his office. (These are things that don’t happen by watching more television or playing more video games.) He was honest and modest, and perhaps more than any of these things, he was a spiritual man in love with God.